Thursday, February 02, 2006

Know the details. In the end Munich, Steven Spielberg's tense exploration of the Munich Olympic massacre aftermath, pulled out of its PR tailspin to win the coveted nomination from Walk the Line. Still, the Oscars are to-be-owned by the great Ang Lee gay tragic romance Brokeback Mountainwhich --catch this neat trick for a gay romance-- within 24 hours it will be the highest grossing Best Picture nominee.

Read the rest for lots and lots of tiny details that Oscar obsessives love. Find out...1. How these films got nominated.2. Which Oscar trends they are connected to.3. What all-time record Spielberg is gunning for.4. Which two categories are most dangerous to miss in the nominations if you want to win Best Picture.And more... As always, feel free to share if you know of more interesting trivia... Each of the top six categories will get this exhaustive treatment over the next two weeks, so keep reading.

11 comments:

Arkaan
said...

Woody Allen is the most nominated writer in history, with 14 nominations. The second most? None other than Billy Wilder. That might not help in the top six category, but I like it as trivia nonetheless.

re: Films about gangsters and criminals get nominated, but I believe this is the only about assassins ever to be so honored

Four words for you: The Wizard of Oz

Also, although I'm sure the brand recognition that comes with Spielberg certainly helped Munich in obtaining a slot, I wouldn't consider it (and opposition to the other films) as the only reason. Despite the lack of pre-cursor noise, Munich snuck in because it's a sneaky movie. It's not the type of movie you can have a strong initial reaction to, which led some people to call it "muddled." It's pretty much the opposite of Crash, a film that simplifies everything down to cheap ironies. I have to think the reason Munich made the list is there is a segment of the Academy that couldn't file it away so easily ("Oh, it's just another Spielberg movie with a bad ending.")

Well, Cheadle did produce Crash so he sorta got nominated despite the fact that he's not on the official list.

And, did you know there is already CONTROVERSY!!!!... in the make-up category. *chuckle*

there's a big kufuffle in Australia right now because AMPAS released the nominees with one ladies name on it (an Australian) but then changed it to another lady (also australian) because they found out she left the production 5 days before the end, which is against the rules. So now they're accepting arguments for the dismissed nominee. If they decide to reinstate her it means one of the two who are nominated will be booted out.